THE deputy governor of India’s central bank KC Chakrabarty appears to have paid the price for what local bond dealers jokingly term as “open mouth operations”. Six days after his remarks in an off-the record chat with a few reporters in New Delhi that the Reserve Bank of India should be more aggressive in raising interest rates to combat inflation, Mr Chakrabarty has been stripped of all the key portfolios he held. Retribution was swift after news reports slammed an unnamed RBI official for his ill-timed comments, which led to the 10-year bond sliding by close to 35 paisa last Thursday. The comments came a little after RBI had raised the repo rate by 25%. According to a news agency report, the RBI official had said the monetary policy action was inadequate. Mr Chakrabarty’s penchant for giving bytes to the media on the monetary policy action — or the lack of it — which is uncharacteristic of central bankers has not gone down well with policy makers. In what is seen as an unprecedented move, Mr Chakrabarty has been divested of the most important portfolios he handled such as the human resources development department, or HRD, department of administrative and personnel management or DAPM, besides urban banks department and rural planning and credit department. These will now be managed by another deputy governor, Subir Gokarn, whose primary responsibility so far was monetary policy and economic analysis and research. The portfolio reshuffle will end up silencing, at least for now, Mr Chakrabarty’s vocal efforts at promoting financial inclusion. It comes at a time when the former chairman of the state-owned Punjab National Bank had helped put in place a basic structure for financial inclusion by banks. Mr Chakrabarty will now be left only with just the customer services department, the department of Information Technology, inspection department and the rajbhasha department. The onus of handling issues relating to financial inclusion will now be on Usha Thorat, who has been given charge of the rural planning and credit department too. The other portfolios under her will be the central security cell, department of banking operations and development, department of banking supervision, department of currency management, department of expenditure and budgetary control, legal department, premises department and urban banks department. Shyamala Gopinath will look after the department of external investments and operations, department of government and bank accounts, department of payments and settlement systems, department of non-banking supervision, financial markets department, financial stability unit, foreign exchange department, internal debt management department and the secretary’s department. Mr Gokarn will now be in charge of the department of administration and personnel management (including the RTI Act), the department of communication, the department of economic analysis and policy, department of statistics and information management, human resources development department, monetary policy department and the deposit insurance and credit guarantee corporation.